Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Feedback

2013 Arbitration Committee Elections

Status

Thank you for participating in the 2013 Arbitration Committee Election. Results are available here.
Please offer your feedback on the Election process.

WP:ACE2013/F

Feedback by role

Voters

This a technical gripe, but I suppose it belongs here. Once a voter votes, they should be able to return to the vote page to view their vote as well as change it (or re-vote). Perhaps this could be handled by cookies. - Mr X 20:32, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Candidates

Election volunteers

A substantial oversight(?) or problem has been raised in this discussion at the 2013 Elections talk page. It appears that some (many?) voters were not aware that the ~~Election volunteers~~ Electoral commission (chosen based on a few "voters" showing up before the elections and then appointed by Jimbo based on that rather limited vote) are given access to CU data (IP and user agent) for the purpose of scrutineering. Further feedback on this should be pursued. It appears that this fact is not widely known, it could be better advertised next year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:36, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I almost just edited your post to make this change, but that might be presuming too much. You mean "Electoral commission", not "volunteers". The only reason this actually matters is that there are also people who sign up to help out in limited ways, who are also "volunteers", but who have been called "Election coordinators". Pretty much anyone can sign up to do that, and they don't come anywhere close to CU data. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:16, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, fixed! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:22, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But I second SG's concern that most people probably did not realize they were choosing people who would have access to this info. Personally I'm not concerned about this year's commissioners, but I think this should be made crystal clear next year, as it might affect peoples' choices. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:15, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- As I don't think that there will ever be a large number of people who show up to the vote for the electoral commission, might it be sensible to restrict the role to people who currently or formerly* have the checkuser permission (*and did not have the permission removed under a cloud)? Thryduulf (talk) 16:22, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback by topic

The ballot

My ballot was [ Oppose | Abstain | Support ]. I was rather surprised that it was in that order, as I would think that the most natural position for support would be the left hand side, not the right hand side. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:30, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I found that counterintuitive too. Hot Stop talk-contribs 02:00, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could there be a way for users to choose to sort the list in alphabetical order? I made my intended votes list ahead of time and checking back and forth was annoying. NW (Talk) 03:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Strong agreement on both points. Regarding the alphabetizing, it was especially tricky because of the large number of candidates this year. I tried to cast all the votes by memory, then found myself doing checksums of Supports and Opposes to see if I missed anyone (and I did), and it was time-consuming to go back and forth and figure out which one was missed. I do understand that the initial list should be randomized, but it would be nice to have the option to alphabetize it, too. --El on ka 04:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed that it was counterintuitive. Also, the directions talked about registering a "No vote" but the ballot reads "Abstain." This language should be harmonized. Carrite (talk) 04:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This RFC stated that "The three voting option during the election will be "Support", "Abstain" and "Oppose"." Giant Snowman 12:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This might make me look dumb, but I thought the position of Support and Oppose (as far as which was on the left or the right) was random. If it isn't - well, could it be? Should it be? That'd defuse any argument one way or the other. UltraExactZZ ^Said~ Did 20:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just checked and the ballot I was shown had Support|Abstain|Oppose and I refreshed the screen four times, each time the candidates were in a different order but not the voting columns. So, my guess is that the order of the columns has been changed so that Support appears first. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:23, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I found the "withdrawn" notice confusing. It applies, I think, just to the name above it, but as both that name and the "withdrawn" line have live radio buttons, the note might equally apply to the names which follow the line. (Could the presence of those two buttons affect the final calculations?) I wonder how those four candidates feel about this placement? Bielle (talk) 18:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Since the order of the candidates is "random" from one voter to the next, a different group (and number) of candidates will be below the Withdrawn Candidate for every voter. (And different every time the same person votes, for people who change their vote, like I now need to because I probably assumed the order was Support/Abstain/Oppose and probably didn't look.) One out of every 20 whatever times, the Withdrawn Candidate should be the bottom line so nobody is below it, and with the same frequency, Withdrawn Candidate should be the top line, so everybody is below it. So it shouldn't effect the election very much, but it would be good if a way could be found to avoid this in the future. Neutron (talk) 23:20, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - I think the "~~[name of candidate]~~ (candidate has withdrawn)" format used now should be agreed in advance of next year's election in case it is needed. Thryduulf (talk) 13:31, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The "Abstain" (by whatever name) option seems to have been causing controversy this year and so alternatives are likely to be considered. To facilitate these discussions by restricting them to options that are technically possible, we need, in advance of next years RFC, a list of all possible voting structures that SecurePoll supports. Thryduulf (talk) 15:14, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate questions

About the general questions:

The page on which the general questions to candidates were discussed was separate from the discussion of other issues concerning the election. A few days before the discussion was to end, I commented that the draft question set (mostly carried over from last year) was confusing in formatting, including sub-questions and sub-sub-questions, and also that a few of the questions appeared to be outdated. A couple of other people commented that the set of questions was too long.

As a sitting arbitrator (albeit my term doesn't expire this year and I won't be running again next year), I hadn't planned to edit the questions beyond fixing a few typos. However, someone asked me to go ahead and share my thoughts. At that point, rather than merely tinker, I put together on the talkpage an alternative draft of 15 more straightforward questions that could become a basis for the discussion if the community wished.

Over the next few days, I was surprised that very few people commented on the question set, was more surprised when two days before the election someone swapped my entire question set in to replace the original draft, and was most surprised when no one complained that that had happened or did any further editing.

As the election moved ahead, I realized that what was and was not included in the general questions was less important this year than in some past elections, since there is no limit this year on the number of additional questions that any editor may post to all the candidates. In other words, basically the "general questions" have the same standing as anyone else's questions, except that they are labeled "general" and they go first on the answer pages. But that is neither here nor there.

I think the general questions as I drafted them worked out fine—although I would have done some more honing if I'd realized that what I wrote was going to be used verbatim!—but would encourage thought about the question set before next year. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I did not complain as I thought it clear that I was placing my seven questions in any event -- I did not see any "strong consensus" otherwise, to be sure, and certainly no "consensus" that the "general questions draft" was to be set in stone. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:25, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see us return to a maximum 2 questions per candidate per 'voter' next year. It took considerable time and effort to read all of those questions and responses, and I rarely felt I knew much more about the candidates at the end, although I could be pretty sure of the perspective of most of the questioners. Most voters will not take that time to read all of this, and vote on their personal recollections (if any) of the candidate. Keeping the question pages down to a more reasonable size will increase the likelihood that voters will invest the time to find out more. Risker (talk) 03:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have mentioned this before but it probably bears repeating. The amount of questions this year was ridiculous. Because I think responsiveness is important, in the end I answered sixty five questions. Some were asked even more. That means there were somewhere around thirteen hundred questions all together. I can't see how that could possibly be seen as helpful to the community as it is highly unlikely that even one single person read every single question and every single reply. Part of the issue is that some of the guide writers ask their set of questions to each candidate and then base their guide solely on the the responses to those questions. I find that practice to be irresponsible and short-sighted, but it is what it is. There were also retread questions from people who clearly did not even look at the previous questions. Some argue that arbs will have to put up with worse than that. While this is true, it also misses the point that the questions are not supposed to be a test of the candidates endurance but rather a way to determine what their stances are on important issues so that voters can make an informed choice. The way it worked this year there was simply too much information to reasonably expect anyone to sort through. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:30, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that what we need is for all general questions should be given to a group of users who will filter out irrelevant and redundant questions. In case of unclear questions, this group will word it better to make it more clear. In case of overlapping questions, the group will try to merge them into a single question. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:14, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Voter requirements

We have this recurrent issue where we set voting requirements that cannot be incorporated into the SecurePoll process; specifically, edits in a specific namespace is not something SecurePoll can use to develop a voter list. We've known this for a while, but persist in keeping this criterion. Instead, I suggest (a) increasing total edits to 200 and (b) requiring them to be in the 24 months prior to November 1. This will ensure that at least everyone voting is currently or recently active in the community, and will balance out the problem of having to double check the whole voter's list to ensure 150 mainspace edits. Risker (talk) 03:18, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That seems sensible. The purposes of the requirement are making socking harder and ensuring voters have a basic level of familiarity with the project. I don't think the namespace the edits are in terribly relevant to either purpose. Neljack (talk) 05:24, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, checking for 150 mainspace edits isn't hard - simply look at this list (replace the user name with any of your choice) and cpnfirm that the "older" link is blue. A toolserver tool could duplicate this, and even count delted edits. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:52, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Coordination

Is it my imagination, or this time around is there a shortage of non-Electoral Commission help? I get the feeling that most people who have tweaked things and linked things and clarified wording in the past are kind of assuming the EC will take care of it, while the EC is kind of assuming that others will take care of the day-to-day stuff, and things are falling through the cracks. For example, I noticed that John Cline left a perfectly reasonable suggestion for a change to the watchlist notice on the Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Coordination subpage, on November 28th, and no one even answered that they'd seen it, or that they weren't going to do it because X, or anything. I made a suggestion last week about tweaking either the watchlist notice or the voting instructions, and that never got noticed or agreed to or even shot down. I don't think the intent of the RFC was that the EC was going to do little stuff like that themselves. And now, checking that coordination page again, it looks like part of the problem is that this year zero people signed up as "coordinators". There are usually quite a few, what went wrong this time? --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Floquenbeam. The impression I had was that the Electoral Commission would only deal with a crisis, with critical stuff that requires a decision to be made, or where an explicit and formal ruling was needed. Day-to-day stuff absolutely needs handling by those 'ordinary' community members who volunteer as co-ordinators, and that distinction needs to be maintained. It would help to have separate pages for contacting the co-ordinators and the election commissioners. Hopefully this system will shake itself down over the next few cycles, but ensuring the distinction and encouraging people to help out with co-ordination is absolutely needed. Carcharoth (talk) 14:59, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't help that the nomenclature in use is very confusing. It may be that people didn't even realise the role of coordinator existed. AGK [•] 14:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong sentence

It's a small matter, but the sentence "An Abstain does not affect the outcome in any way" is somewhat absurd and should not appear on the voting instructions. See discussion here. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:47, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not yet convinced, and have asked the OP for a clear example.--S Philbrick (Talk) 18:27, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that the only options you have, apart from abstain, are Support and Oppose (this is assuming you're casting a ballot at all - it's accepted that a complete slate of abstains can be said not to affect the outcome). So Abstaining on a particular candidate can certainly affect the outcome, relative to either of the only other available choices. The sentence just makes no sense whatever. W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:09, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Candidate requirements

It should be made explicit whether users who are under a community or Committee sanction are eligible to run (see discussions 1 and 2). As a starting point for the discussion I suggest that they should be allowed if all the following are true at the close of nominations:

The restrictions do not prevent them taking part in an arbitration case in which they are not a party.
For example a prohibition on participating in dispute resolution, or ban from the Wikipedia or Wikipedia talk namespaces would disallow someone's candidacy,

an interaction ban with specific named individuals would not.

The restrictions are noted as part of the mandatory information part of the nomination statement (a link is fine)
They agree to recuse from arbitration cases that relate to the subject of their restrictions (again this would be in the mandatory information section so as not to infringe on their word-limited statement).
For example a user topic banned from articles related to marine mammals would need to recuse from an arbitration case about killer whales. Thryduulf (talk) 14:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One minor cavil -- if a topic ban is "broadly construed" then the recusal requirement should only apply to "strictly construed" intersections of a case and the area of the broad topic ban (yeah - I find "broadly construed" to be problematic, for example suppose a person adds a category specifically about the topic to a hundred or so articles which were previously unrelated to the topic ban -- I find such behaviour to be an example of gaming the system (although it appears some admins differ on this and consider the category as bringing all the newly added articles under that ban). Collect (talk) 14:23, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I generally concur with Thryduulf, and would add that there needs to be clear guidelines on how to handle Arbitration Enforcement requests for standing candidates. It's unfortunate that the process of enforcing sanctions can so easily be paralyzed with indecision because (I guess) no one anticipated that a candidate for ARBCOM could also be the subject of an AE request. Of course, a more radical approach and simpler solution would be to preclude users subject to active sanctions from running for ARBCOM. - MrX 20:26, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Responding to MrX's last comment, although one could generalize that editors subject to an active sanction, as a class, are less likely to be suitable for ArbCom than other editors, there may be exceptions, and I think it is best to leave this issue to the voters. In my experience as an arbitrator, there are enough things I need to consider pro and con when it is proposed to sanction an editor, without having to also filter (or consciously disregard) through the lens of "should we, in effect, disqualify this person from running for arbitrator?" In addition, although I am sure no arbitrator would consciously do so, our decisions (especially in the fall months) would inevitably give rise to someone saying or thinking, "Arbitrator X voted a topic-ban on Editor Y so Y couldn't run in the election." Or imagine an editor who was topic-banned from some obscure topic three years ago, has stayed away from that topic, and now comes before the Committee seeking to lift the topic-ban simply so he or she can be a candidate; the arbitrators would effectively be voting on whether or not this person should be allowed to run in the election. The same considerations would also find their way into noticeboard discussions about imposing and lifting community sanctions, with the same ill-effects. I think it's best that the voters be trusted to handle this. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:44, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - I am fully onboard with Brad's response; I agree that it would be unwise to declare that a potential candidate who is the subject of a sanction should be ineligible to run. That said, I watched the discussion involving the timing of a block on a candidate, and the concerns about the ramifications. In order to prevent a re-occurrence, could we clarify that a candidate is eligible if they are not blocked at the time they submit their candidacy, thereby removing the incentives to game the system? (For that matter, I might be persuaded to remove the "unblocked" requirement.) If this is done, we might also amend the blocking procedure to allow responding to community questions to ArbCom candidates.--S Philbrick (Talk) 19:55, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In general I agree with Brad. In addition, I would hesitate to try to come up with specific rules to cover every conceivable contingency; I think that's the main reason we choose an electoral commission. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:22, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Voter guides

In this discussion at the 2013 Elections talk page, it was revealed that in spite being "told that it was better if I placed my guides after the elections period closed, period", a guide to guides was published on Commons on November 23, and updated throughout the elections. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:39, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced this is a big deal. Guides to guides shouldn't be included in the official template - that's the important part to me, and they weren't - but I'm agnostic about saving and updating charts on commons, and I really don't see a problem posting it on-wiki after the election is over. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:18, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we can actually prohibit anyone from creating a summary of the voter guides, either on or off wiki, although we can decide (and have decided) to omit reference to them from any official election pages. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:30, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I generally agree with Floquenbeam, in no circumstances should they be included on or linked to from the official template or any election page (including talk pages and guides) before the voting closes. As for elsewhere, I think they should be discouraged rather than prohibited unless there is a specific issue (which should be handled on a case-by-case basis by the electoral commission), and they should certainly be required to have a disclaimer that they are not guaranteed to be either accurate or up-to-date. Thryduulf (talk) 16:33, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Floquenbeam and Newyorkbrad, - the restriction not in the official template seems enough, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:57, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Suggesting that the candidate guides per se not mention other candidate guides as being essentially in that same category of "guide to guides." A template listing all other guides in a random order seems far less of a problem than a guide which specifically praises or decries specific guides by others. Collect (talk) 17:21, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are now two different issues being discussed here. A "guide to guides" as discussed by Sandy Georgia above (and in the earlier discussion on another page) is a compilation of the "results" of other guides into a chart, so users can see how many guide-writers supported each candidate. The decision was made a year or two ago that such "guides to guides" should not be linked from the official election template, and I agree with that. But as noted by several people above, there is no prohibition on creating such a page, putting it in user-space, uploading it to Commons (where there are probably more serious issues to worry about, if we're going to talk about what's on Commons), or whatever. The discussion in the RfC's really only dealt with the template. Collect, however, brings up a different issue, which is whether it is ok to include comments on other guides, in a guide. I do not think a guide that is solely made up of comments on other guides should be linked from the templates, but that's not what the issue was this year, and as far as I know, nobody has ever done that. What happened this year is that a guide-writer or two put some comments about other guides at the end of their own guide. Within reason, I see nothing wrong with that. (One particular problem this year was that a guide-writer commented on another guide before the second guide-writer had even supported or opposed any candidates, which does seem out of line. But I am talking about a situation in which there is actually a substantive guide to comment on.) If someone wants to post a guide, I think it is fair game for other users to comment on, for example, the quality of the analysis in a guide, or the motivations of a guide-writer in preferring certain candidates. At some point such commentary could become a personal attack, but I think a fair amount of leeway should be given in this area. Neutron (talk) 23:49, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm rather bemused by the opposition to summary tables. Looking at the 2012 RfC it seems that the main objection was that, as Risker put it, "a summary table of voting guides fails to provide the reader with insight into the values being emphasized by the creators of the individual guides and instead encourages the reader to weight all of the guides and their recommendations equally." That seems to me to misunderstand the purpose and use of such tables. No-one with any sense will just vote based on who is most popular with the guide writers. No-one with any sense will treat all the guides equally, without looking at the quality of their reasoning. What a table is useful for is reminding yourself at a glance of the positions of various guide-writers on candidates. After reading a dozen on more guides, it becomes hard to remember all their positions. When looking at the table I'll just ignore the guides I don't think are any good, but if I see that a guide-writer I think is trustworthy and thoughtful has opposed a candidate I'm thinking of supporting and I can't remember why I'll probably go and have another look at what they said. That is useful when I come to actually make my final decisions. Neljack (talk) 07:37, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- In fact, plenty of voters do just that, and at least one asked where to find a guide to guides this year. But since consensus here seems to be that publishing a guide to guides is acceptable, I will consider doing one next year. I once did a guide to the reasonable guides, and have refrained since from doing that out of respect for concerns raised by the community. Since everyone seems OK with Hahc's flaunting of community concerns by publishing in the most visible place possible a guide to guides, I expect then there will be no concern should I publish a guide to guides in the future. This seems to fall under "Concensus can change" and apparently it has. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:35, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - It will be interesting to read a guide to guides from you :) — ΛΧΣ²¹ 16:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - Guide to guides to guides, anyone? W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:22, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The actual guides are what is problematic. Extended critiques of candidates are innocent and helpful enough, and voters need a space to set out their thoughts on a candidate. However, the guides are advertised on the official election page, and given a leg up in several other ways, which gives undue prominence to people who call their analysis a "guide". This is wrong. The official candidate discussion pages are barely used at all; instead, the guides are where the action is at. Worse, guide writers are not required to give candidates a right of reply or declare their prejudice. I say this as a candidate who was opposed by only one guide this year: guides are soapboxes, and have to go. AGK [•] 14:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You made your position about the questions I asked of every candidate quite clear. I would note that I supported Roger -- and only you seemed to regard the questions as a "battle to the death" of some sort. I make it a point of holding no grudges against anyone at all (ask Andy the Grump and Snowded and TFD how much of a "grudge" I hold on people.) Thirty-two years online tends to make "grudges" seem petty enough, indeed. I had zero "prejudice" and regard your dismissive implication that my supports were based on "prejudice" to be quite unworthy of the lowliest editor on Wikipedia, and ask you reconsider your use of that term. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:53, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Shocking as it may seem, I wasn't thinking of your guide or questions. My comment relates to the principle of guides: I think they all give undue prominence to the writer's views. AGK [•] 15:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Everything that is wrong with guides, per AGK, is magnified in "Guides to guides". (The reason voters prefer guides to the candidate pages is that the candidate pages are too darn long and there are too many questions.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:00, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed on 'guides to guides'. We actually had a very manageable candidate discussion page this year, which did not display the lengthy questions page. However, as everybody was using the guides, it was basically useless. AGK [•] 15:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have long been concerned by the lack of reply in voters guides available to candidates. They are, as AGK says, sometimes soapboxing; additionally, they are often inaccurate. If they remain on the template, then fairness does really require that candidates have an opportunity to reply in the same length and prominence as the original critique. While some guide writers are scrupulous in accommodating candidate feedback, others aren't so even-handed. Perhaps the solution is to move the commentary out of guides altogether and instead put it on the candidates' question pages ... At least, it will generate some traffic there. Roger Davies ^talk 06:33, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback and planning

It would be nice if the feedback offered each year were actually acted upon. There were some elements of the 2012 feedback back that should have been acted on but were not. Some suggestions were also made on the WT:ACE2012 page but never properly brought in to the feedback process. For the December 2014 elections, it would be good if planning commenced earlier, and incorporated the feedback from this page and earlier years. Some way to get increased participation in the pre-election discussions would be good as well. Carcharoth (talk) 14:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with everything in that comment - perhaps we should collectively set a calendar entry for 1 October 2014 to start the planning then? I'm not sure how to attract increased participation, particularly without inducing fatigue for the actual elections? Thryduulf (talk) 15:10, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Way, way too late. Start planning in July. Every year, it's far too late to make the kinds of changes that people come up with. In fact, RIGHT NOW, today, we should update the instructions to scrutineers, and the "job descriptions" to specificaly state that election commissioners have the same access (including access to IP and user agent) as the scrutineers. Discussion of possible alternative voting methodologies should actually start no later than March: using a different voting system requires mathematics, programming and extensive testing to ensure that the intended result is obtained; that is a multi-month project. (Currently the only two verified voting methods are Support/Neutral/Oppose and Schulze method I which is intended to give only one winner.) Risker (talk) 16:36, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Timetable

Looking at the voter graph, couldn't the whole thing be truncated a bit? It seems to go on for a month of Sundays. Do we really need two weeks for voting, for instance? Roger Davies ^talk 06:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If we shorten the voting period we need to extend the period available to evaluate the candidates. I didn't vote until 5 December as it took me that long to read the portions of the candidate questions page I found relevant and evaluate the answers. I then looked at a couple of guides written by people I know who have good judgement to see where they differed from my opinions and why. This then led me to ask a question of GorillaWarfare and when I had received and evaluated her answer only then did I vote. Thryduulf (talk) 10:00, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Election results

After the election results were established, I found it awfully difficult to actually find the results. How about a banner on the main page announcing that the election results are in? And a banner on, say, the watch list giving the results. A nod to transparency and an affirmation of the importance of voting. - Neonorange (talk) 05:57, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]